Save Our Rural Towns
The developer behind the proposed Six Senses Hudson Valley luxury resort has filed suit in Dutchess County Supreme Court seeking to overturn the Clinton Planning Board’s unanimous May 28 Positive Declaration — a decision that triggered a formal Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and the most thorough independent scrutiny the project has faced in 15 months of review.
The Article 78 petition, filed by CECNY Land Holdings, LLC on June 26, asks the Court to annul the Positive Declaration and eliminate the EIS requirement entirely, effectively returning the project to a rubber-stamp track. The timing is notable: the filing arrived the same day the public scoping comment period closed, with dozens of substantive submissions from scientists, environmental organizations, elected officials, and concerned residents calling for exactly the kind of rigorous review the developer now wants a court to prevent.
Six Senses markets itself globally as a pioneer of sustainability, ecological stewardship, and harmony with the natural world. Its parent company, IHG Hotels & Resorts, touts environmental responsibility as a core brand commitment.
And yet here, in Clinton, New York, the same developer is asking a court to deny the citizens of Clinton and Hyde Park the benefit of a full, independent environmental analysis of a project that would introduce up to 240 guests at a time onto a 236-acre agricultural property straddling two towns, discharge treated wastewater into Crum Elbow Creek, and operate at an intensity the area’s zoning was never designed to accommodate.
The contradiction could not be more stark: a resort that sells environmental consciousness as a luxury amenity is fighting in court to avoid the environmental accountability that ordinary New Yorkers are entitled to under state law.
The petition argues that the Planning Board’s Positive Declaration was “arbitrary and capricious” because it lacked sufficient written explanation for each area of concern — wastewater, ecological habitat, community character, and consistency with the Town’s Comprehensive Plan.
But read carefully, the petition undermines its own premise at nearly every turn.
On wastewater, the petition acknowledges that even the Board’s own Chairman, Paul Thomas, stated he wanted the issue included in the EIS — not because the system was deficient, but because “all this is connected.” That is precisely the kind of integrative, systems-level thinking an EIS is designed to support. The developer’s complaint that the Board wanted to look more closely is not evidence of arbitrariness; it is evidence that the Board was doing its job.
On community character, the petition quotes Board Member Auspitz arguing for the EIS because it would allow the public to feel that “everything that can be said and can be done is done.” The developer calls this illegitimate. We call it democracy. The Planning Board serves the residents of Clinton — not the shareholders of IHG.
On community plans, the petition boasts that the developer’s own consultant at NPV stated the project would have no significant adverse impact on community planning. Yet that same consultant was working for the Planning Board — paid for out of escrow funded by the developer. The Board was under no obligation to accept that conclusion, and it didn’t. That is exactly the kind of independent judgment SEQRA is designed to protect.
The petition leans heavily on the cost and duration of the review to date — noting that the applicant has submitted over 10,300 pages of materials and reimbursed the Planning Board more than $153,000 in consultant fees over three years. This is offered as evidence that further review is unnecessary.
But this framing is misleading in a critical respect.
The project was not before the Clinton Planning Board for three years. It was denied — on June 4, 2024. That denial was the Zoning Board of Appeals doing exactly what ZBA’s are supposed to do: saying no to a project that did not meet the community’s standards.
What followed was not a straightforward resubmission. IHG and its legal team applied sustained pressure on small-town boards to create new regulatory pathways that had the effect of overriding that denial. Only after those maneuvers succeeded was the project reintroduced to the Planning Board — on October 27, 2025. That means the current review has been underway for just fifteen months, not three years.
The “three years of review” the petition invokes includes the period before the project was denied, the denial itself, and the legal pressure campaign used to resurrect it. Counting that clock as continuous review is a sleight of hand. The Planning Board that issued the Positive Declaration in May 2026 had been living with this reintroduced application for fifteen months — not three years — before concluding that an EIS was warranted.
Volume is not the same as adequacy, and duration is not the same as thoroughness. The entire premise of SEQRA is that an independent environmental review — one not produced by or for the applicant — is necessary before significant development proceeds. The EIS process gives the public, the Board, and independent experts the opportunity to evaluate the developer’s claims on their merits, with full transparency. That the developer has spent considerable time and money making its case — and considerable legal effort keeping it alive — is not a reason to foreclose the public’s ability to examine it.
Clinton’s current predicament did not arise by accident. In 2022, town leadership welcomed this project without full appreciation of what it would become. Once invited in, the development interests have proven difficult to dislodge — and they are now using the courts to extend that advantage.
CECNY Land Holdings paid a price for this property that has been widely noted as a significant premium over its agricultural value. That premium only makes sense if the developer was confident — from the outset — that it could build something far larger than the property’s zoning or environmental capacity would ordinarily support. The lawsuit is not a good-faith challenge to a flawed process. It is an effort to protect that original investment by eliminating the one mechanism capable of revealing whether it was ever justified.
Common Senses Hudson Valley believes the Planning Board acted properly, courageously, and in full compliance with its legal obligations when it issued the Positive Declaration. The Board heard 15 months of developer-produced evidence, considered extensive public comment, and concluded — unanimously — that further independent review was warranted. That conclusion is entitled to deference under well-established New York law.
We are confident the Court will agree.
In the meantime, the EIS process should proceed. The scoping record — now closed — contains some of the most substantive scientific and environmental analysis ever submitted in connection with a land use proceeding in this region. It deserves to be acted upon, not buried by litigation.
The residents of Clinton, Hyde Park, and Rhinebeck deserve an honest accounting of what this project would actually cost their land, their water, their roads, and their community. That is what an EIS provides. That is what the developer is trying to take away.
We will not let that happen without a fight.
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